Repairing all of the mausoleums will take about a year, and rehabilitation of the mosques and libraries in Timbuktu and Gao - another Malian city captured by rebels - is expected to take about four years, said Eloundou Assomo. The reconstruction of two of the mausoleums was completed this week. On March 14, UNESCO and the Malian government formally launched the restoration operation with logistical support from the U.N. They found 16 mausoleums destroyed and more than 4,000 ancient manuscripts burned. “It was very traumatic for the communities,” but it didn’t stop them from visiting the crumbled remains.Īfter a French-led military operation drove out the Ansar Dine from Timbuktu, an international team led by UNESCO traveled there in the summer of 2013 to assess the damages to the earthen structures. The armed groups thought that destroying the sites of the buried saints would keep residents from going to them to pray, said Eloundou Assomo. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Ansar Dine wanted to impose strict Sharia law in Mali, and considered as idolatry the Sufi Muslims’ reverence of their ancestral scholars in Timbuktu, said Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the Bamako, Mali-based Africa unit of the U.N. When the militants, known as Ansar Dine, captured Timbuktu for several months in early 2012, they smashed more than a dozen mud and wooden mausoleums using sledgehammers and burned thousands of ancients manuscripts kept in the “city of 333 Sufi saints.” Now, an international effort is underway to repair the damages. The manuscript collections of Timbuktu, in northern Mali, represent an immeasurable heritage estimated to comprise 300,000 documents, many of which dates back to 12th to 15th centuries.When Islamist militants took control of northern Mali in 2012, they left their mark by vandalizing the sacred sites of Timbuktu. Following their damage in July 2012, the 11 mausoleums and Sidi Yahi doors have been inscribed on the UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger. In 2004, the Tomb of Askia in the city of Gao was added to the list. Mali's three great mosques of Timbuktu, namely Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahi, and 16 mausoleums were inscribed on the UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1988. She pledged that her organization will spare no effort to help rebuild the mausoleums of Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao and to mobilize "all our expertise and resources to help protect and preserve the ancient manuscripts that reflect the glorious past of this region as a major center of Islamic culture." "Now that the situation will normalize in Timbuktu, we must make every effort to help the people of Mali write a new page in its history, in a spirit of national unity," said the secretary-general. UNESCO has been engaged in conserving these manuscripts over the decades and has helped Mali create the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, the largest repository of ancient manuscripts in West Africa.ĭescribing heritage as "an essential element of the country's identity, its past and its future," UNESCO Secretary-General Irina Bokova said heritage restoration and reconstruction could give the Malian people strength and confidence to advance national reconciliation. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that it will seek more support for the preservation of cultural heritage sites in Mali, particularly the manuscripts of Timbuktu.
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